Here is the preview by Commissioner from the Detroit Board. The link below will show you the other Horizon League previews he has done. Always a good read.
Green Bay
21-17 Overall, 10-8 Horizon (4th), NET 190
Green Bay has had 7 head coaches since joining D1. Only Dick Lien (1983-85) had a losing record with the Phoenix.
if Nothing Else, At Least We Have a Player Named ‘Tank’
This year, with each team, I’ve included a little graph showing the school’s KenPom ranking since 1997. Green Bay is the 5th team in this group of previews, and the 5th for which the overall trend line over those years is down. The decline has been especially strong since Butler left after the 2012 season. Perhaps it was inevitable. If you look at the schools making up the conference, and in particular the resources they devote to basketball, their attendance numbers, their (lack of) tradition outside of Butler, Detroit, and Loyola (two of which have left), there’s a very strong argument that the MCC nee Horizon simply had 15 years of overachievement from the late 1990s to the culmination with Butler’s back-to-back final four appearances. The league got a bit lucky with a bunch of good coaches (Perry Watson, Bruce Pearl, Bo Ryan, the long run of coaches at Butler, Gary Waters, Brad Brownell, perhaps Jimmy Collins), and with Butler providing a steady boost, it simply punched above its weight. Someday I’ll have to write up a history of the MCC/Horizon. But the conference has gone from being a predator conference (snatching up Dayton and Marquette, and nearly Creighton and Bradley in the late 1980s) to a scavenger conference, picking at the leftovers of the increasingly equal, if not superior, Summit.
Green Bay was the first dominant team in the reconstituted MCC after the league absorbed the top half of the Summit before the 1995 season. The Phoenix finished second to Xavier that year (the last season in the league for the Musketeers and also for La Salle) but won the conference tournament to claim an NCAA bid (Xavier got an at-large). There they lost by one to Purdue. They went unbeaten in conference play in 1996 and returned to the tournament. But that would be their last NCAA bid for 20 years, until the arrival of Linc Darner as coach in 2016.
Darner came into Green Bay four years ago touting his “RP 40” system—40 minutes of “relentless pressure.” His Phoenix have never quite lived up to that billing, but they do play a very up-tempo offense and do come at teams in waves. According to KenPom, the Phoenix played the 13th most up-tempo pace in the country last year, with the 8th shortest average length of possession when on offense (and that was their lowest rank in Darner’s 4 years.) This squad will be typical, with a bunch of big guards and small forwards often playing without clearly defined positions. Every time Green Bay gets the ball, you’ve got to get back on defense quickly and be ready to play.
Green Bay loses all-conference forward Sandy Cohen from last year’s CIT runnners-up, but returns its next 8 top scorers, and next 9 in minutes played. Still, the Phoenix aren’t getting much respect. They’ve generally been picked to finish lower in the conference standings than last year, when they finished 4th before their CIT run. One reason for that may be a sense that last year’s relative success was more based on luck than talent. The Phoenix, for example, gave up more points than they scored in conference play, by more than a point per game. By comparison, UIC, which tied Green Bay for 4th, outscored its opponents by more than point per game, and Oakland, which finished a game ahead of Green Bay, outscored the conference opposition by more than 3 points per game. IUPUI, which finished two games in back of the Phoenix at 8-10, also outscored its conference opponents. Of course, winning close games matters. But being outscored is usually not a formula for sustained success, and teams that put up winning records while being outscored usually tend back toward the mean the next year. We’ll see if that happens with the Phoenix this year--but just in terms of personnel, Phoenix fans have a decent case to feel slighted by the preseason polls.
The man mainly expected to pick up much of the slack from Cohen’s graduation is 6-2 redshirt senior JayQuan McCloud. The well-traveled McCloud—Murray State, Milwaukee, and Highland CC—finally found a home last year with the Phoenix, and with Cohen gone will be expected to up his 13.7 ppg.
However, there are several other players who could up their game to help cover the loss of Cohen. It’s worth noting that even as Green Bay improved from 13 to 21 wins last season, three young players the Phoenix were looking to for improvement actually took a backwards step in production. Shooting guard (and Novi native) Kameron Hankerson dropped from 10.7 points, 2.6 assists, and 38.7% shooting as a sophomore to 8.1, 1.6, and 32.8% as a junior. Forward Manny Patterson dropped from freshman averages of 6 points and 4.9 rebounds to 4.6 and 3.8, respectively. And guard PJ Pipes fell from 7.2 points and 1.9 assists to 6.1 points and 1.3 assists as a soph. All three could have comebacks this year, with Hankerson the best bet in my mind.
Elsewhere, the Phoenix feature the Horizon player with the best name, ShanQuan “Tank” Hemphill, and athletic forward who plays a bigger game than his 6-6, 190 lb. frame would suggest, and bring in one of the league’s more promising freshmen in guard Amari Davis, Ohio’s D-II Player of the Year last season. Cody Schwarz is a tall perimeter player who can shoot over the opposition, senior forward Josh McNair started 16 games last season, and juniors Trevion Bell and Hunter Crist provide depth at guard on what will be one of the more experienced teams in the Horizon this year.
The bottom line is that Green Bay finished last season strong (11-5 including their CIT run) and they’ve got the bulk of that team back. They've got both age and experience, usually very positive factors at the mid-major level (much more so than for the top majors, where the best players often become early entries to the NBA). Screw the prognosticators: Could be a good year up north.
Probable Starters
G – JayQuan McCloud, 6-2 RS Sr. (13.7 ppg, 2.3 apg, 39.3% 3PtFG)
G- PJ Pipes, 6-2 Jr. (6.1 ppg, 1.3 apg, 35% 3PtFG)
F – Tank Hemphill, 6-6 Sr. (11.7 ppg, 5.6 rpg)
F – Josh McNair, 6-6 Sr. (5.6 ppg, 3.4 rpg
F – Cody Schwarz, 6-9 RS Sr. (6.0 ppg, 2.9 rpg, 34.6% 3PtFG)
Key Bench
G – Amari Davis, 6-3 Fr.
G – Kameron Hankerson, 6-5 Sr. (8.1 ppg, 32.8% 3PtFG)
G/SF – Trevion Bell, 6-7 Jr. (5.8 ppg,, 34.7% 3PtFG)
G – Hunter Crist, 6-3 Jr. (1.2 ppg)
G/SF – Japannah Kellogg, 6-8 Fr.
F – Manny Patterson, 6-8 Jr. (4.6 pgg, 3.8 rpg)
Read more:
udtitanbasketball.freeforums.net/thread/935/commissioners-2019-20-horizon-previews#ixzz62M63apHH